A Pennsylvania couple drowned in a rip current while on vacation in Florida with their six children, according to authorities.
I thought the ocean was powerful and rough water was nothing. Then I went to Hawaii during rain season. Rip tides are no joke.
I’m good size 6ft 240lbs. I got hit with one wave and I had to reflect on life after that. I went from big man to flailing boy quick. I saw the lord!
Just swim sideways or float. It’s so easy to float in the ocean and doesn’t take much energy. Most people panic, though, and don’t remember to do simple things. When I was in lifeguard training, most of the stuff they teach you is how to deal with completely irrational actions people do when panicking.
Also, never underestimate the ocean (or any moving water). I’ve been swimming, waterskiing, surfing, scuba diving, whitewater kayaking, sailing for over 40 years, and I’ve had a TON of instances of “oh shit, I have zero control over what the water is doing to me right now.” Just completely powerless as the ocean tosses you around or the river pulls you down behind a boulder and holds you until you can find the bottom and kick out of the “hole.”
Think of it like a river. If you were getting washed away down a river, would you try to save yourself by swimming up river to where you were? No, you swim to the bank and make your way back from there.
A rip current is just a river in the ocean.
Edit: meant to reply to Not_Rick
I will never understand people’s strong desire to live or vacation near the ocean. You pay a massive premium just to live on “the coast”, with the ever present threat of hurricanes for what? Some sounds and breeze?
People will arrange their vacations so that they can visit the ocean, for what? Unless you’re a surfer or something, it’s boring, it’s just another body of water with an increased risk of death or injury by various means.
I’m not even one of those that’s afraid of the ocean or anything, I’ve been in it, I left in less than an hour because it’s boring AF. It’s much more fun to go to a water park or even just a public pool, hell your city might even have a public water park/pool like mine does.
Awful way to go. Stay safe out there, folks.
Yeah, they’re usually marked, but ocean temp changes a lot of shit and you can run across ones with zero signage.
I’d imagine Florida is especially bad because they refuse to believe in climate change and anything connected to it.
So I can see them defunding the organizations meant to keep this updated and people safe
If you go into the ocean you should know a little bit about how to survive in it. Otherwise, you may not.
There is zero reliable ways to tell if there’s a rip from the beach…
The danger is under the waves, if there isn’t proper signage you won’t know until it’s probably too late. And everyone is different. The teens were able to swim to safety, the parents weren’t.
If you recognize you’re in a rip current, what you can try to do is swim parrell to the shore and then try to come in. It’s dangerous because the rip can’t be overcome by swimming directly in, you have to go around it.
But even if you know that, you might not remember, and it might not help.
The people that often die from this, are overconfident people like you who think it can’t happen to them because they’re smart.
